In which I brag. Tersely.

I survived school conferences on Thursday. Right away, that should amaze everyone.

Especially because I just confessed to having misplaced the instructions for how to schedule the stupid things. So I spent Wednesday on the phone like an executive secretary from the Mad Men era trying to make appointments with all the teachers. And I did. And we went.

And the boy is doing better.

But the real boast is that I saw Harold Ramis sitting in the hallway talking on his cellphone, and not only did I not eavesdrop, I didn't go all SQUEEE!!!! HAROLD RAMIS!!!

Because, as I explained to my son that evening, Harold doesn't need a 52-year old suburban housewife going all fangirl up in his grill, yo.

I did tweet about it, though.

Oh, and I posted to Mamarazzi. I discovered that we'd been out-snarked by, of all things, Mad magazine. You have to go there to check out the graphic. Click on it to embiggen--you'll want to read it.

Anyway, I feel like a genius for basically repackaging such superior snark.

Also, today we're flying to New Jersey to attend a B'not Mitzvah. Which, I know, you're thinking "Poppy spelled it wrong, it's Bat Mitzvah."

And you would be wrong! For B'not Mitzvah is the plural of Bat Mitzvah.

I'll bet you didn't know that, did you? DID YOU?

See? My awesomeness is actually surpassing itself. Which should be impossible, but somehow, isn't.

Whine it like a mommyblogger, Part Trois

It's not all that often that I come right out and announce that I'm planning to indulge in a full-on white suburban über-privileged mommyblogger whine-fest. As in that "WANH!! I went to Sephora to buy a tube of $40 tinted moisturizer and they were sold out!" bullshit that makes you want to reach through your laptop, grab her expensively-moisturized neck, and squeeze until her eyes bulge.

So if your eyes roll over obviously well-to-do stay-at-home-mothers wringing their hands over a botched spa treatment, you'd better find something else to read. Because I'm here to complain about my weekly cleaning team.

I'll admit up front that having a bunch of women come to the house to dust, vacuum, and sanitize the bathrooms and kitchen is a wonderful luxury. After I hired them, among other benefits, incidents of food poisoning in the Buxom household fell to a record-breaking low.

And honestly, nobody should have to clean up the living quarters of a herd of pack rats, which is what we all are. I KNOW.

And I can certainly accomodate them. I can be flexible. Like when they started making the beds with the down comforters under the bedspreads--OK, that's not really what you want to do with a bunch of feathers--weigh them down under something else--but it's not hard to undo. And OK, they don't know not to wash iron skillets with soap and water? Fine. I'll hide all the skillets in the oven. And so what if they can't tell recycling from garbage and put everything in the wrong bin and I have to go outside and fix things until I feel like Phil Hartman as the Anal Retentive Chef?

But I was getting ready to type up some minutes last night, only to discover that my notes were missing. I immediately concluded that the cleaning team had found them and put them someplace. A place that made total sense to them, but as far as I was concerned, was magically counterintuitive.

And I was right. Unless you think the proper place for loose papers is in a basket under my bedside table. Under a needlepoint canvas.

And I didn't just find my handwritten notes. I found several pieces of unopened mail from the middle of October, to wit:

1. a bill
2. the stewardship packet from my church
3. my daughter's first trimester grades
4. a very official-looking IEP packet for my son
5. the instructions for how to schedule parent/teacher conferences at my son's school

Which means there are at least five people out there who think I'm an unorganized, ineffectual idiot.

Well, them and the entire internet.

I'm not dead yet,

but I drove my mother to the airport today.

After a visit spanning five of the longest days I have ever experienced.

Longer and as grueling as the days I've given birth.

Longer and as painful as the days I've had root canal surgery.

Longer and more tedious than the time I sat in the school auditorium listening to kindergarten, first, and second grade students perform a Winter Concert that--(because singing songs about Santa or Frosty the Snowman would be too cliché)--was a musical tribute to the first flight of Wilbur and Orville Wright at Kitty Hawk--and no, I am not kidding.

Then there was the rainy day I graduated from college, and--after processing in with the rest of the cap-and-gown-wearing seniors--forgot to tip the accumulated rain out of my folding chair, and spent the entire graduation ceremony sitting in a cold, wet puddle.

My mother's visit reminded me of all these delights. AND MORE.

At the moment, the experience has left me feeling like a very old pencil. My wit is like the point; it's dull and might even be broken. My brain is the eraser end; it's worn down to a nub. My paint is showing wear, and in places, it looks like someone has been chewing on me.

You see, I decided that I would NOT HAVE A FIGHT WITH MY MOTHER no matter how hard she tried to make one happen.

Internet, I shall return.

After I've sharpened my wit.

Why I need to visit my friendly neighborhood optician

People, what with the not-letting-my-kids-flunk-out-of-school morass I've fallen into, I'm surprised I have time to read anything at all. Ever. But one moment recently, probably while I was sitting in my car waiting for a child, I fired up the email program on my iPhone.

Hooray! A comment on my blog!

Which I couldn't read. I kept tapping the screen trying to make it bigger, but no matter how big it was, it still looked like that thing where people visit a website, type something in, uʍop ǝpısdn suɹnʇ ƃuıʇıɹʍ ɹıǝɥʇ puɐ.

So I went home and checked my email on my laptop, and the writing wasn't upside down. It was Cyrillic.

This means two things. No, three:

1. If you don't blog for a while, people stop leaving comments, and when they do leave comments, they're in Russian.
2. Why do I spend what feels like the entire morning photoshopping Joe Jackson's hat and sunglasses onto a dog? So that people will head to Mamarazzi and comment. In Russian, if possible. Hey, it's a hobby. Other people knit--I troll for Russian comments.
   
3. I obviously need to get new glasses so I can tell upside-down writing from Cyrillic. But rest assured, I will not be going to Joe Jackson's optician.

Bullet-ridden Saturday, or NaBloPoMo can bite me

• I'm not dead yet.

• High school is still kicking my ass. Naturally, I don't mean my high school; I mean my son's. A brief recap: in place of Plan A (he does his homework and gets good grades) we've moved from Plan B (he does his homework, gets help from his parents, and gets good grades) to Plan C (he does his homework, gets help from his parents and the free school tutors and gets good grades.) The good news is it seems to be working. The bad news is that Plan C involves getting him to school at about 7:00 a.m., which means the chaffeuse has to be up at before 6:00.

• I'm actually getting used to it. Proof? This morning I got up before 7:00.

• However, I'm relying even more than usual on enormous amounts of caffeine to get through the day.

• My son was also in two concerts last week: Freshman Boys Chorus and Freshman Orchestra. He sang a solo in Freshman Chorus. I was so proud that every button popped off my blouse. Metaphorically speaking.

• Literally speaking, every button only pops off my blouse when I'm at a funeral.

• This actually happened. More on this on one of those long, dull winter evenings. When I have time to blog. Which will apparently happen when my son graduates from high school.

• The most cruelly disappointing moment of the week occurred when we sat down to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer and realized that we'd forgotten to return the DVDs we'd finished the weekend before, which meant that we only had two episodes to watch.

• In related news, last night I went to bed at 10:00 p.m.

Life can be very cruel.

I'm on the Nordstrom website. Even as we speak, another tab on my laptop has an entire department store open and ready for businesss. (And if you're reading this in my archives? It's still true.)

But oh Nordie's. Take thy beak from out my heart. These


are sold out in my size.

And this


is no longer available in red.

Newsflash!

Guess


where


the


Buxoms


will


be


spending


the week


before


Thanksgiving?